


Pray Your Gods

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Series: Gaidencraft [4]
Category: Saiyuki, Saiyuki Gaiden
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lovecraft Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 07:25:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6229120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't make him angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pray Your Gods

Removing his stamp from the heavy parchment, he waited a moment for the ink to dry before lifting the page carefully by its corners, examining his mark with a critical eye. Neat, smooth, even. Perfect corners.

A blot of shadow flashed behind the page, followed by a stealthy ticking sound like the tips of long nails on glass. Jerking his head up from the official order he was scrutinizing--though an order for what, he didn't care enough to notice--Konzen opened his mouth on the breath he took to yell, the first syllable pulling his lips back from his teeth in a snarl.

_"Sa--"_

But the _saru_ wasn't there. Staring into the black eyes of the small, mottled bird clinging precariously to the window frame outside, Konzen let the rest of his warning snap die away on his lips. Right. He'd banished Goku to Kanzeon's questionable care in the hopes that he'd get some work done.

Regarding him dubiously through first one eye and then the other, the bird threw itself from the window with much thrashing of wings, another flash of shadow that was just as quickly gone.

Stupid, that he let himself get distracted by something so small. Stifling the urge to growl, even at himself, he bent his head to the task again, setting the one sheet aside and reaching for another. More dry requests and petitions cleared by undersecretaries, more reports to file away in the official vaults, and all of it needing the seal of someone nominally responsible. Which Konzen didn't feel he was--responsible in the sense of _accountable,_ that is--because their actions and desires weren't his. He was just the lucky bastard dragged in by his ear one day and handed a stamp.

_"Here. If you won't do anything useful, you can do this."_

Damn hag. It'd serve hir right if Goku destroyed hir audience chamber. Or that entire wing of the palace, for that matter. Maybe then se'd stop giving him the "Goku's just a kid" bullshit.

Konzen knew better. Goku wasn't a kid; he was chaos with a stomach.

And he was staring at the wall again, the one with the stain that looked bizarrely like the Bosatsu riding on a dragon. Konzen felt sorry for the dragon. Poor innocent bastard.

"You're too--" spilled out of his mouth, and _young,_ he would have said automatically, but Goku wasn't around to give him that wide-eyed look and ask him _why,_ Konzen--why do you feel sorry for the dragon, huh? Is the Bosatsu heavy? Why am I too young to understand? I don't want to ask Ten-chan; I want to talk to _you._

He could hear his own teeth grinding, which was good, he supposed, since it made him stop. It was pointless to get upset over things that hadn't even happened. It was just that it was too fucking quiet in here. Shifting irritably in his chair, he glared at the window again, almost hoping to see another flash of motion--another bird, maybe, so he could throw one of his sandals at it. Or maybe his stamp.

On the other hand, he was learning to think before he threw. Consequences of velocity were new to him still, and he had _that_ to thank Goku for, as well.

Outside his window the breeze shook the branches with a stealthy hiss, punctuated by the soft crunch of sandals on the path, someone exclaiming about the state of her robes or her hair. Far down the hall, tittering gossip echoed quietly, three male voices intertwined. The chair creaked, short and sharp, when he crossed one knee over the other. He'd never noticed any of these sounds before Goku, in the days when he was solitary and silent.

Pushing one stack of papers away, he pulled another closer to him and frowned. The top sheets didn't lay flat like they should, the stack's edges rippling in the middle. Clenching his jaw, he flipped through the thick pages, expecting at any moment to find splotches of mud or bits of foliage from the gardens, maybe the forgotten remains of a stolen snack.

Halfway down the pile, something bright caught his eye, a streak of orange and yellow amidst smooth cream and crisp black. Thumbing back a few pages, his frown cleared with a sigh as he pulled out a sheet that had obviously been left for him.

In the lower half of the page was a blob. It might have been a rock, but he knew the artist well enough to recognize a bun when he saw it. The fact that the bun appeared to be grinning and waving at the huge yellow sun above it would have dispelled any doubts he might have had. Enthusiastic coloring had crumpled the paper in places and stray fingerprints marred the edges, but it was definitely Goku's handiwork.

"Monkey," Konzen murmured, his own voice unfamiliar in his ears. Prodded to suspicion, he flipped the paper over with a wary scowl, half-expecting to find that some important document had been sacrificed for these scribblings, but disaster, it seemed, had for once been averted.

It wasn't a very good sun. Perhaps the monkey just needed more practice.

Someone knocked while he was still considering what to _do_ with the thing, and he set the drawing aside with the niggling feeling of having put off a potentially embarrassing decision for later.

"Yes?"

The door opened promptly, but only a head was poked inside, Marshal Tenpou's familiar smile--the troublesome one--plastered on tight. Either the man wanted to borrow one of the Bosatsu's scrolls, or he was about to announce the emergency evacuation of Heaven. Either were equally possible when that particular smile made an appearance.

"Konzen. Oh, good. You're sitting down."

"Is that supposed to reassure me?" Konzen demanded.

"Hahaha. Don't move. Kenren?" Tenpou called, pulling his head back to glance over his shoulder.

Glaring narrow-eyed, Konzen felt the vein in his temple start to throb. "What did he do?"

"Now, Konzen," Tenpou chided, sticking his head back in to fix Konzen with a reproving stare. "Don't blame this on Kenren. He was merely _present,_ that's all."

Konzen snorted. This was Kenren, after all. "Like that isn't enough?"

For a moment, Tenpou almost looked as if he would smile, or at least continue to defend his subordinate, but the words died even before he was interrupted.

And that worried Konzen. That worried him quite a bit.

"Get out of the way, damn it," Kenren grumbled from the hall, stomping towards the door. "He's heavy."

One of Konzen's brows twitched. "You've abducted your commanding officer, and you've come to me for sanctuary?" he guessed.

Tenpou's answering smile was mostly teeth and glinting eyes. "That's a _lovely_ idea. Why didn't I think of it?

"On the couch, please," he added as he moved out of the doorway, which briefly earned him another scowl until Konzen remembered Kenren's approach. "Gently, now."

"Easy for you to say," Kenren muttered, sliding in sideways and keeping Tenpou between him and Konzen. "He weighs a _ton."_

They didn't bring him the dragon. Konzen would have bitched, but he would have _understood_ if they'd brought him the dragon. Men like these sometimes did insane things for obscure reasons. It was part of the world's balance, the way rabbits sometimes broke for cover at the wrong time and what made wolverines growl back at bears. The dragon would have been _predictable._

It was Goku in Kenren's arms, a limp bundle of knees and elbows, uncombed hair and dirty feet. He looked _small,_ unnaturally pale beneath sun-browned skin, so still he almost seemed another person. Goku was never this still, even in his sleep.

Konzen didn't remember rising, but when Kenren backed guiltily away from the couch, Konzen was already there, standing so close he could have brushed the tousled hair away from Goku's closed eyes if he chose. "What happened?" he asked tightly, only marginally aware of Tenpou's presence at his shoulder.

"Goku...he'll be fine," Tenpou replied, which wasn't what Konzen asked. "He's just had a bit of a shock."

A shock?

"A _shock?_ From _what,_ a lightning bolt?" Konzen demanded, nails digging into his palms. Maybe the dragons really had used Goku for target practice. He wondered if fangs or claws would make the more impressive necklace, or if he should just settle for a few heads over the gate.

"No, no. He only...saw something unexpected."

Konzen hadn't been able to peel his eyes away before, but now--

Tenpou's reassuring smile remained firmly in place, but Kenren flinched when Konzen turned on the two, something glittering-cold beginning to _burn_ inside.

"What _exactly_ am I not supposed to blame General Kenren for?" Konzen asked, his voice low and soft, textured with pure threat.

"Now, Konzen. I already told you it wasn't his fault," Tenpou began in a tone that was likely meant to be reassuring, even placating.

"Yeah," Kenren pitched in, straightening out of his slouch and pulling his shoulders back. It made his very-regulation coat gape wide on his very-unregulation chest, which was perhaps an attempt at distraction. What Konzen noticed was the fading marks, like ghostly rope-burns, patterned across his skin. "We were just--"

"You were _'just'?"_ Konzen repeated, the final word a hiss through clenched teeth. "In his _office?"_

More hissing. Kenren was starting to look nervous--truly nervous--and that seemed like an unequivocally positive thing to Konzen. The hell with the little voice that was trying to tell him otherwise.

"Uh, yeah," the general began, the bluff stark in his eyes. "We were just in his office, and--"

"Listen," Tenpou broke in, shifting by subtle degrees to hover between Kenren and Konzen, "I know we should have locked the door, but things progressed rather quickly, and...well, Goku _has_ expressed a fair amount of curiosity lately about our natural forms, and--"

Konzen's temper wasn't an elastic sort of thing. It didn't stretch to fit the situation or relax when life rolled easy. It was a solid beam of iron barring a very thick door, and when it snapped, all hell broke loose in an instant.

He was vaguely aware of _looming,_ of towering over the other two who stared wide-eyed up at him. The taste of their caution spiced the air, but their individual faces broke up, reformed in layered facets of now, almost-now, _possible_ -now: Tenpou defended by ghostly, snaking tentacles; Kenren armored in the strength of a war god. Neither of which impressed him. The serrated tips of his braced limbs dug up splintering furrows of marble as he reared back to strike, folded wings rasping a rattlesnake shiver as rage took him in a kind of ecstasy.

"Kanzeon's _tits,"_ he heard-- _tasted_ \--Kenren breathe, the general mesmerized and frozen in the face of Konzen's stare. "I thought you had to drive him out of his _mind_ before he--"

"He's out of his mind right now," Tenpou interrupted mildly, brows arching until they almost disappeared as Konzen unsheathed all his spikes at once.

Fury and hunger beat at him, a sweetness that coiled low in his gut and made all the possibilities layered before his eyes whirl and shift--another strained moment of calm, a blurred smear of two men in flight, two men attacking, the spangled shadows of blood over everything. Everything all at once, and all he had to do was reach out and pick the future he wanted from the myriad choices that clotted his vision.

There was one choice where he stared back at them from their own level, no longer looming, no longer angry, but that was imposs--

"Konzen?" a muffled voice asked, thick with sleep, and he whirled with viper-quickness, an unfamiliarly sour tang wreathing the air around him. This...this wasn't what he wanted, was why he was so angry, because Goku shouldn't have to _see_ \--

But Goku, who was rubbing his eyes as he sat up on the couch, lowered his fists and blinked up at him with wide eyes as gold as Konzen's armor.

***

Goku usually had to claw his way out of sleep by inches, dreams and a comfortable lethargy weighing him down every morning until Konzen threatened to withhold breakfast. It was different this time, more like having his attention drawn apruptly back to the present by a sharp rebuke than his usual leisurely surfacing.

"Konzen?" he asked, just in case, but Konzen didn't snap at him for not paying attention or thump him for napping when he was supposed to be learning. Sitting up with a yawn, he knuckled his eyes and wondered what that weird thrumming sound was, like the mother of all hornets circling his head.

Opening his eyes, he looked up...and up...at what his blurry eyes first took for a Heaven-sized mantis, glittering like the sun. Blinking as the world came into focus, he noticed any number of differences--the rows of spikes like a razored spine; the _face_ more snake than insect; the shivering, half-furled pinions with translucent feathers veined like dragonfly wings--but it was the eyes that drew him the most. Narrowed and brilliantly faceted, they looked like someone had frozen the sky and chipped bits of twilight out, the sort of violet you never saw in the world below. He'd know those eyes _anywhere._

"Wow, Konzen--you're even prettier like this!" he exclaimed, smiling so hugely his face almost hurt. Inside he was practically dancing.

"Brave monkey," he heard Kenren mutter, and thus reminded, he clapped both hands sheepishly over his mouth. You weren't supposed to call gods _pretty,_ and he kept forgetting. At least the Bosatsu didn't mind.

"Oh, man, I had the weirdest dream," he announced loudly, hoping he could distract Konzen from the indignity of being called 'pretty.' "Ten-chan was there, and Ken nii-chan, and...aww, I forget how it went. Something about an octopus," he muttered, shaking his head. How had that gone again? Tenpou had been trying to dress Kenren up as a sea creature? 

The forgotten dream didn't bother him long in the face of the present Konzen had given him. He'd really wanted to know--really _really_ \--what Konzen looked like at home, when he was most _at_ home, like when he relaxed around the people he most liked and trusted. Having Tenpou and Kenren there didn't diminish Goku's happiness at all; from where he sat, it was just more proof that Konzen had accepted him, that Konzen truly didn't mind having him around. It didn't even matter that Konzen was changing back now, folding his wings and his long-clawed limbs in, iridescent gold plates softening to pale golden skin.

What was odd was that Konzen looked very calm, not like he was holding back his irritation or ignoring the world around him for all he was worth, but like he'd been emptied of all that and filled up with something warm. Part of him wished Konzen could look that way more often, but part of him--a slightly guilty part--really liked the way Konzen's eyes got all glittery just before he exploded. Ken nii-chan must like it too, he sometimes thought, or he wouldn't spend so much time trying to get Konzen worked up.

"Hey, Konzen...you're not mad at _me,_ are you? Because Kanzeon-sama said I was too young to get you worked up enough to change, and I've seen you pretty mad."

Like now for instance.

"Se...said... _what...?"_

Konzen's face had gone all flushed, and his eyes were doing the glittery thing again, and then Tenpou and Kenren were ducking the whipcrack unfurling of Konzen's wings, the edges of which were sharp enough to gouge chunks out of the walls. Whatever else Konzen had been about to say disappeared in a scream of frustrated rage like a dragon sharpening its claws on broken shields, and that was when Goku got his first real look at Konzen's _teeth._ Which were terrifically impressive, though the forked tongue was just odd.

Glancing curiously at the barbed tail now lashing across the floor, something in its sinuous writhe made him think of that weird dream he'd had. What _had_ it been about--Tenpou trying to kill Kenren with an octopus? And _that_ made him wonder--

"Uh, Konzen? How did I get here, anyway? I remember talking to the Bosatsu, but after that, it's all fuzzy."

Konzen was still speechless with anger, but Kenren and Tenpou, who'd barricaded themselves behind Goku's couch, peered over the back cushions with nearly identical smiles.

"Don't worry about it, kid," Kenren offered, sneaking one arm out to pat his head. "The Bosatsu tires everybody out...one way or another."

It was a good thing Kenren had fast reflexes. Five spiky claws buried themselves in the wall right where Kenren's head had been just moments before, and when they pulled free, they ripped out a great chunk of marble that fell with a dull thud.

"Ow! Damn it, Konzen!"

"Hmm. Well, at least now he has an excuse to redecorate," Tenpou offered with a shrug. "He's been complaining about the broken window for weeks."

**Author's Note:**

> Well, you know, Golden Cicada Child. :3 For the purists, I'm very sorry, but the Cthulhu mythos is puzzlingly lacking in the matter of insect Elders; the closest thing I could find were the Shan, which were pigeon-sized, and which wouldn't do for my purposes at all. D:


End file.
